Connected: Chapter 15 (Patreon)

Chapter 15

Camille

My eyes shot open to the sound of blaring alarms and Marion standing over me with her bare hands on my head. I lobbed into a sitting position as I drew in a deep gasp, filling my empty, burning lungs with air. My chest was heavy, my heart was racing with the kind of oxygen-deprived panic like I’d stayed underwater for too long, and I gulped in breath after breath as if my life depended on it. Even though I could hear the alarms and little else, I was too disoriented to make sense of it, and I glanced around in confusion.

I’d barely had time to register that I was in the infirmary of the lab before Luna stormed over and threw her arms around my neck, pulling me into such a tight hug she nearly yanked me off the steel table. “Don’t you ever fucking do that again,” she scolded over the deafening alert.

“Do what?” I asked.

“Die,” she said as she let me go.

I squinted at her in bewilderment, and then looked over at Marion. “The silver killed you,” Marion said, and tossed a glance at the speaker the alarm was blaring from, “but something’s happening. This might be our chance to escape, so I brought you back.”

She brought me back. That’s why her gloves were off, but she couldn’t bring people back from the dead without paying for it. “What did you have to sacrifice?”

“I…” Her eyes fell, and she stared at the floor in concentration for a few seconds before meeting my gaze. “I can’t remember.” I didn’t know how to thank her for what she’d given, for what she’d risked by bringing me back, but I’d try by getting her out of here alive.

The alarms stopped ringing, and Luna peered to the door and asked, “You think it’s the Pack?”

“Yeah,” I said, a relieved smile pulling at my lips. “It is, I can feel Kyla. She’s here.” I looked at Marion and asked, “Do you know where the main entrance is? Do you know where they’d come in?”

“I think so,” she answered.

“Do you need anything from here?” I asked, ignoring the aches in my body as I eased off the table. “Did you finish the antidotes?”

She pulled two syringes from her pocket. “I have them.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

Marion led the way, veering left out of the infirmary instead of going straight back toward the fighting rooms and the cells. It took us down a separate hall that was lined with windowed doors. Some of them were offices, others were small rooms set up with lab equipment, a couple were bathrooms or barracks for staff. As we hurried down the corridor, I heard the stomping of feet about to round the corner behind us. Luna heard it too, and we both grabbed Marion and hauled her into the bathroom we were passing. Three different strides sprinted past where we were hiding, yelling about intruders. Once they were gone, we left and followed them, knowing they’d lead us directly to the Pack.

We ran down the hall after the distant sound of gunfire, but it stopped before we got there, and we slowed at another intersection. A new pair of footsteps were creeping down the hall away from where the shots had been. We pressed our backs against the wall, and the moment the person rounded the corner, I grabbed them and threw them against it, preparing to threaten death in order to find out what they knew. But my eyes met a familiar pair of hazel ones, and Abby’s entire face went from panic to pure joy.

“You’re okay,” she breathed, throwing her arms around my neck, and I hugged her back while she shouted, “Kyla!”

Kyla came running, skidding to halt with one of the guard’s walkie-talkies in her hand. She heaved a sigh of relief as Abby released me and her eyes filled with tears, and then her arms were around my neck. She squeezed me so tight I could hardly breathe, but I didn’t care, I hugged her just as firmly and never wanted to let go.

She pulled back enough to set her forehead against mine, kissing me as tears leaked down her cheeks. “I thought you were dead,” she cried, kissing me several more times.

“I’m okay,” I told her. I hugged her hard one more time. “Marion brought me back. I’m okay.”

Kyla let me go and turned toward Luna and Marion, but my gaze was drawn to Abby. She was staring at Marion, wide-eyed and frozen, like she was waiting for the moment Marion would recognize her. But though Marion saw Abby, she didn’t seem to know who Abby was.

“Abby?” I prompted, and it took her a few seconds to blink away her shock and look at me. Even if I didn’t like it when Abby was in my head, I thought, Are you okay? Are you here?

She swallowed hard, passing a final quick glance at Marion before nodding. “We have to get out here. The whole place is rigged to blow.”

“Where’s everyone else?” Luna asked.

“They’re coming,” Kyla answered. “I felt Camille and we didn’t wait.”

“I’m not leaving until Butcher is dead,” I said. “And Palmer’s still trapped in his cell.”

“Butcher won’t leave without his work,” Marion said.

“And someone will have to start the countdown,” Abby added. “There’s probably a control room.”

“Okay,” I said, “Abby, I want you to get Marion out of here. Can you do that?”

“I’m not leaving you,” she argued.

“Marion has the antidotes,” I said, “and we owe it to her to get her out of here alive.”

Abby’s eyes scanned mine, considering that I’d said ‘we’ instead of ‘I.’ She was partially responsible for Marion being here in the first place, she was the reason Marion’s husband was dead, and she nodded.

“Are you sure?” Marion asked. “I could help.”

I shook my head. “Get to safety. Your son already lost his dad. He’s not losing his mom too.”

“His dad?” Marion asked in confusion. “I’ve always been a single mother. I don’t know who his father is.”

I stared at her in shock, beyond baffled by what she was talking about until it hit me. That’s what she’d given up for bringing me back. Something she valued more than her own life: the memory of her husband. She couldn’t remember him or the pain of losing him, but that wasn’t a relief. If something ever happened to Kyla, I wouldn’t want to forget no matter how much it hurt, because forgetting the bad also meant forgetting the good. Maybe that’s why she didn’t recognize Abby either. Maybe she hadn’t just forgotten him, but also the people responsible for killing him and bringing her here.

I looked over at Abby, but she’d dropped her head to stare at the ground. “It’s okay,” I told Marion. “We’ll handle things here. Abby?” Can you do this?

“Yeah.” Abby cleared her throat. “Yeah, okay. Be careful, and keep in touch. I’ll grab a radio on the way out.” She handed Kyla a keycard and then forced herself to look at Marion. “Come on.”

We watched them disappear around the corner, and then Luna said, “I’ll go get Palmer and free as many of the prisoners as I can. You find Butcher and kill that son of a bitch.”

“You gonna be alright alone?” Kyla asked. “You can’t Phase.”

Luna thought about it for a second and then paced around the corner, returning quickly with one of the guard’s rifles, a keycard, and another radio. “I’m good to go,” she said.

We took off at a run, heading back into the heart of the lab. Most, if not all, of the staff must’ve started evacuating already, because we didn’t pass a single guard on our way there, and any person in a lab coat was too frantic to pay much attention to us. Luna split off when we reached the main hall to go and get Palmer, and Kyla and I stood there, trying to figure out which direction to go.

“How do we find Butcher?” Kyla asked.

“The old-fashioned way,” I said. “With my nose.”

I led her to the last place I knew Butcher had been for sure, the observation room where he’d watched me fight Luna. At the door, I closed my eyes and inhaled a deep breath through my nose, picking through all the scents that cluttered the hall until I could filter out Butcher’s. It crisscrossed multiple times, going to places he frequented in the corridor, but it didn’t take me long to recognize the freshest one.

We picked up running as I inhaled every other second, the scent so fresh it still lingered in the air. The trail took us to the hall that intersected in front of the infirmary, in the opposite direction as the main entrance where Kyla and Abby had come in. There weren’t as many rooms this direction, but we passed a few more halls as the scent led us to the furthest corridor. To a dead end with a single door. We didn’t slow down until we burst into the room and skidded to a halt.

Marion was right – Butcher wouldn’t leave without his work. This was his main office, and he was behind the desk at the far end of it, pulling files out of a cabinet and shoving them into a briefcase.

He whirled around when we burst in, confusion crossing his face for a moment at seeing me alive, and then his upper lip curled with hatred. “You’re like a goddamn cockroach.” Two growls accompanied his sneer from either side of his desk. It was the men I’d fought when Palmer helped me. The mutts who’d volunteered for this.

I scoffed. “You think your guard dogs will save you?”

Butcher inched toward a second door at the rear of his office. “I wish I could stay and watch them tear you apart. But I’ve got important work to deliver.” He dashed out the door, and my movement to chase after him was met by snarls from the men flanking his desk.

“He’s not here to call it quits this time,” the bigger one said. He had a patch over his left eye, and they were both as cut up as I was from our fight.

“I wasn’t the one with teeth on my throat,” I quipped.

“You cheated!” he roared with offense.

Kyla laughed. “And you think you stand a better chance now that she’s got a partner that can Change?”

The smaller one glared at her. “You smell like even more of a mutt than I do.”

The bigger one spat, “And the only thing worse than a Pack wolf is a mutt who sold out.”

An angry growl rumbled in my chest, and I glanced over at Kyla. “Let’s show them what a real connection looks like.”

All four of us Phased at the same time, our opponents instantly lost in the fury of Serum Twelve. Even though I felt the same rage ignite in my blood, Kyla’s presence gave me the control not to lose myself in it. Gave me the control to use my brain even if I fought more fiercely than usual. And Kyla and I had such a gloriously unfair advantage.

We’d been on countless runs, in countless play fights, in so many situations in which we’d nurtured our connection, and we knew each other intimately. I knew all her favorite maneuvers just as well as she knew mine. We knew every snap or withdraw of tension, and which one meant when the other would dodge or strike. I knew when Kyla needed help, just like she knew when I was in over my head, and the instant communication of a panic spike or a flash of pain in the connection made us lethal.

Both of us took a few hits, but I dodged the bigger one just as the smaller one lunged at Kyla, and I intersected him mid-leap. I snapped my teeth down on his throat as we hit the ground, biting so hard his windpipe cracked beneath my jaws. I kept the pressure on, sinking my teeth as deep as I could while Kyla went after the bigger one. She was faster than him, and so much smarter, and she dodged a swipe of his paw by hurling herself into it. She slid beneath him and stood under his belly, throwing him off his feet. She twisted around before he’d even landed on his back, slicing a deep gash in his neck with one quick jerk of her head.

We barely waited for the wolf in my jaws to go limp before jumping into action. Kyla scooped up a walkie-talkie in her teeth and then we vaulted ourselves over Butcher’s desk, tearing through the door after him. I kept my nose to the ground, sprinting after his scent, the underlying rage in my veins making me desperate for his blood. We were halfway down a dead-end hall when a shriek sounded over the loudspeakers. 

And then an automated female voice said, “Self-destruct sequence initiated. T-minus ten minutes to detonation.”

That didn’t stop us, and I threw myself at the closed door at the end of the hall, breaking it open and crashing into the control room.

“Don’t move!” Butcher shouted, standing at the control panel with his finger over a button. I glanced at the screens to see he’d pulled up the cameras in the cellblock, where Luna and Palmer were going through and opening cells. “Move one muscle and I’ll blow your sister to pieces.”

Kyla dropped the radio and growled while I bared my teeth, muscles tense and ready to pounce before he could even think about pushing that button. His ‘enhancements’ might’ve given him a chance against me while I was human, but now we were blocking the only exit, and I was going to rip him apart. He was dead no matter what he did, but he must’ve known it, because he didn’t wait for me to strike. He slammed down on the button.

A powerful explosion rocked through the lab, shaking the ground beneath our feet as the cameras on the screens went black. I roared so loud and furiously that my throat went raw, and Kyla didn’t need to be told not to hold me back. She released her control in the connection, and any hope Butcher had of escaping a painful death was gone. I lunged even as he drew a scalpel from his pocket, ignoring the pain as he stabbed my shoulder, because pain was nothing when Serum Twelve did what he wanted it to.

Oh, and it did. I clawed and snapped as he screamed and thrashed, tearing into him until I’d ripped away every shred of fight he had left, and he gave up. Only when he stopped moving did Kyla restore my control, but it did nothing for my fury. I snarled at his lifeless body, wishing he was alive so I could kill him one more time for what he did to Luna.

“T-minus seven minutes to detonation.”

There was a crackle over the handheld Kyla had dropped. “Camille?” Palmer’s voice came through, and he coughed. “Camille, are you there? Please be listening.” He choked some more, his voice thick with the dust from the explosion. “We’re alive, but everything collapsed and Luna’s stuck. I need your help. Are you there? Camille!”

Kyla and I bolted out the door, running as fast as our four legs could carry us in the direction of the cellblock. We got to the doors just as the voice over the loudspeaker announce, “T-minus six minutes to detonation.”

The door was broken from the hinges, and we pushed through into the smoky air of the cellblock. The thick glass of the some of the cells littered the ground, and we navigated over and under massive chunks of concrete that had blown from the walls and the ceiling.

From somewhere up ahead, I heard Luna scream with pain, and Palmer’s frustrated voice shouted, “Fuck!”

We dashed toward the noise until we reached them. Palmer was squatted down with his fingers under the lip of a slab of concrete, trying to lift it. Luna’s left arm was trapped beneath, the slab so heavy that I couldn’t fathom how her arm even fit between the concrete and the ground. It was crushed, and it hadn’t been long, but there were tears streaming down her pale cheeks and she was trembling through gritted teeth. Kyla and I Phased back to human, kneeling beside Palmer.

“It hurts so bad,” Luna whispered, her voice shaky and her brow creasing with agony as she squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t feel my fingers.”

“We’re getting you out of here,” I said. “All together. Luna, you need to move once we lift it, okay?”

She gave the smallest of nods, and Kyla and I slotted our fingers under the concrete.

“T-minus five minutes to detonation.”

“One,” I counted, “two, three.”

We all heaved upward, but the slightest shift of pressure had Luna screaming. It didn’t make us stop. We gathered every last ounce of strength we had, grunting through the strain and the burning in our muscles, trying not to let Luna’s tortured wails affect our determination as we lifted it an inch. Two inches. Three, and then four.

“Luna move!” I barked.

But she was so consumed with the excruciating pain that I didn’t even know if she’d heard me. We were losing strength, and the slab was so heavy that there was no way two of us could hold it if one let go to get Luna out. We’d drop it, and we didn’t have time to regain strength for another lift.

“Luna, please,” Kyla begged, her voice strained.

But then someone else grabbed Luna’s free arm. “Got her!” Abby shouted, pulling Luna clear of the debris.

We dropped the slab, and it crashed down with a ground-shaking thud. Luna was quivering worse than ever, and her screaming had faded to muted whimpers and sobs. She was paler than she had been a minute ago, too, with so little strength she couldn’t even lift her head. Palmer scooped her up instead, and she cried out and buried her face against his neck when her limp arm fell painfully to her side.

“I’ve got her,” he said. “Let’s go.”

We turned, taking three strides toward the exit before I realized Kyla wasn’t following. “Kyla!” I yelled, turning back. “We have to leave.”

She was staring through the cloudy air deeper into the cell block, but she turned and took one step toward us, then looked back for a moment before sprinting over and holding out her hand. “I need a keycard.”

“Kyla,” I argued, “we need to go!”

“Give me a keycard!” she shouted, and Abby put one into her hand.

She raced back through the debris, and I ran after her, following her to one of the few cells left intact from the explosion. The cell was still occupied. The prisoner on the other side was me, the vision of a vicious me that I’d seen once upon waking. The fear demon.

I had an idea of what Kyla saw in it, but that didn’t stop her from slamming the keycard through the slot and yanking open the door. “Hurry up!” she yelled at it. “The place is gonna blow!”

It hesitated for a second, its head cocked as it stared at Kyla. Then it bent at the shoulders, giving a shallow, silent bow before bolting out of the cell and down the hall. It ran past the others to make its escape, and we followed. All four of us ran for the exit as the speaker announced four minutes to detonation. Halfway there and it announced three. We reached an elevator, jabbing the button for the ground floor and waiting for the doors to close while each of our hearts thundered loudly.

The elevator took us up, opening to something so unexpected I almost forgot where we’d just escaped from. We were in a cabin. One that looked so normal and unassuming that the doors of the elevator slid closed, and I wouldn’t have known it was an elevator from this side. It looked like a normal set of wooden sliding doors.

There wasn’t time to keep looking, and we hurried out of the cabin. It was in the center of a large clearing in the middle of the woods, at the edge of which Abby’s car was parked. It looked like the others had just arrived too, because about a dozen wolves climbed out of two SUVs next to Abby’s sedan.

“Get down!” Abby yelled as we raced toward them. “The countdown’s almost up!”

We reached the vehicles at the edge of the clearing right as the rest of the bombs went off. The explosion was so powerful it knocked off our balance, and Palmer stumbled not to fall with Luna in his grip. It was like a massive earthquake opened the earth and swallowed the cabin. All the ground almost to the edge of the clearing collapsed inward from the blast, filling what was left of the lab with concrete and dirt.

“Everyone okay?” Eli called, once the noise and the shaking stopped.

Marion got out of Abby’s car and hurried over to Palmer. “Put her down,” she told him. He gently set Luna on the hood of the car, helping her to sit upright while Marion examined her. She was so weak that she collapsed forward with her head on Palmer’s shoulder.

While Marion checked her over, Abby pulled some clothes from the trunk of her car. “Here,” she said, handing them to Kyla and me. “I knew these spares would come in handy one day.”

Marion finished looking Luna over while Kyla and I pulled on the sweats and t-shirts. “She needs surgery,” she said. “Fluids, an IV. She’s already in shock, it’s only getting worse.”

“We can’t take her to a hospital,” Eli said.

“I can do it,” she told him urgently. “But I need an operating room. I need supplies.”

“I know a guy,” Eli said. “Follow us.”

Marion, Kyla, Luna, and I climbed into the sedan with Abby, while Palmer got into an SUV with the others. Marion did what little she could for Luna while we raced after the SUVs at top speed, keeping an eye on her vitals.

“She needs warmth,” Marion said, gesturing to me. “Sit closer.”

I scooted closer to Luna’s right side, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her into me. “You’re going to be okay,” I told her as her head fell on my shoulder.

Marion kept examining her from the other side of the back seat while she trembled against me, and after another minute, she shook her head. “I’m going to have to amputate.”

“What?” I asked. “Why? We heal fast, you have to fix this.”

“No amount of healing will fix this, Camille,” she said. “Her arm is too damaged. Best case, it heals but she’ll never have function again. Worst case, nerves die, muscles die, it gets infected from the inside out. Her best shot at recovering and being able to run again is if I remove it.”

Kyla reached a hand back from the passenger seat, finding my free one to hold it and offer comfort. I nodded at Marion and pressed a kiss to the top of Luna’s head. “You’ll be okay,” I told her, but there was a budding rage deep in my gut. Butcher was dead, but he wasn’t responsible for the entire lab. Luna would never be the same, I would never be the same, and I wanted whoever it was to pay.

“It was my father,” Abby whispered with a tremor in her voice. “Camille, I-”

I cut her off with a low growl. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

She didn't say another word. Nobody said anything until we arrived at our destination. Eli had led us to a small veterinary clinic, where the owner of it was waiting outside. I carried Luna out of the car and up to him while everyone else got out to follow, and the owner led us inside.

“Bring her here,” the man said, waving a dark hand in instruction. He took me to a back room with a steel table and sterile equipment already laid out. “Space please,” he said to everyone that had followed, and everyone but me and Marion was ushered out. “Rashid,” he introduced himself to Marion, handing her a set of elastic gloves as I set Luna on the table.

“Marion,” she said, and gestured to an IV bag on the cart of equipment. “Start a drip. Do you have anything for the pain?”

Rashid pulled on his own gloves and then held up a syringe. “Were-grade anesthesia.”

“Good.” With her gloves on, Marion grabbed scissors off the cart and cut Luna’s shirt off while Rashid stuck an IV into her arm. “Anesthetize her when you’re ready. Camille, you should leave.”

"Give her the antidote," I said. She furrowed her eyebrows at me in surprise. "While she’s asleep, so she can’t refuse. Give it to her. I’ll live without it.” She nodded. “Take care of her,” I breathed. “Please.”

Marion nodded. “I promise.”