Significance (Completed)

Significance - Chapter Twenty Three

I woke up in the dark. I smelled Caleb all around me and moved my arms to feel that his jacket had been draped over my head. I pulled the jacket down to my shoulders and felt the chill hit my face. I was somewhere cold, musty and dark. I felt groggy and unhinged.

There was someone there, that's why I'd woken up. They were laying my arms and legs out and strapping them down, my arms over my head. In my mind my heart spiked in panic, but my body didn't respond. My heart stayed at its slow lazy rhythm and I didn't understand why. I didn't even fight whoever it was.

I tried to focus my brain. Tried to tell myself to look around and see what was going on. Caleb. Where was Caleb? I popped my eyes open as wide as they'd go and looked up to see two faces over me. One I didn't recognize but looked slightly familiar, a woman, and the other had my insides screaming.

Marcus.

I tried to move my hands and feet but they wouldn't budge. My arm hurt. My eyes drifted to see wires and tape around my hand, an I.V. What were they doing to me?

I tried to speak. "What-" My throat felt like sandpaper. "What are you doing?"

"Maggie, finally. It's been hours," Marcus said happily.

"Don't talk to her, Marcus. This isn't a game," the person I could only guess was his uncle barked at him. "Get out of here."

He smiled cruelly at me and left the room. I looked over to see a very heavy looking door slamming shut behind him as he left. The room I was in was small and metal, a box really.

"Now listen to me," the man said and I jerked my face to look at him instead. "You have medicine in you to keep your heart rate low so Caleb won't be able to follow you here. You might hear him, he might get through enough to talk to you a little bit, but you'll just be torturing yourself if you think that he will come and rescue you. He won't. I'm sorry to have to do this to you, but we can't allow the Jacobsons to have the power over us anymore. They've always had a hand over us and now this? I saw an opportunity and I took it." He shook his head. "No more."

He started to leave. "Wait. How long am I going to be here?"

"Until Caleb stops looking for you and forgets about ascending."

"That'll never happen."

He looked at me poignantly and smiled sadly. "I know."

The slamming door was like a nail in my coffin. I understood him exactly. They had no intentions of letting me go, ever, and they fully expected Caleb to spend the rest of his life looking for me in agony. Which from what I'd heard, when two imprinted Aces are not with each other, may not be long. I could already feel the ache in my back and legs for him which made me wonder how long I'd been here already. In just a couple days time we'd be in so much pain we could barely think from what I'd been told. And the medicine they were pumping into me with apparently didn't have pain medication in it because I could feel everything.

How had they pulled me away and Caleb not seen or heard them? What had happened to Caleb, had they hurt him? What happened to Beck at the party? My dad would be freaking if I hadn't made it home by midnight. I couldn't think anymore. My eyes started to drift closed and I could no longer command them to remain open.

I woke with a startled gasp as something warm and wet was on my face. I looked up to see a girl, about my age, wiping my face and hands with a cloth. She dipped her rag and wrung it out moving to my neck and belly under my...wait a minute. Where was my tank top? I was naked under a sheet.