Waters of Lethe, Book 2

52. Watch Your Back

"Remember when Audi and I helped you? Remember when Mateo and his friends were after us? After you? And we rescued you?"

Neither of us had spoken in thirty minutes. He was doing his thing, frigging around with Jai's mind, destroying his essence. I was doing my own thing, staring at the ceiling. Thinking of a million ways to break us out—break Jai out—only to have a million reasons why I should keep quiet and still slam me in the chest, nearly knocking the breath out of me.

When Scott finally spoke again, he was neck deep in Jai's head. I didn't know what he was seeing or what he was doing exactly, but I knew he was almost finished. 

"Yes," I said, my voice small. So small. Like our chances of ever getting out of here.

At hearing my voice, Scott stopped. He stopped tapping on the computer screen over Jai's head, stopped mumbling to himself. I felt him look back at me, could feel his eyes drilling a hole in my right cheek. I couldn't bring myself to look at him, because I would just end up looking at Jai and how he was sleeping peacefully in his white chair. Whatever they were giving us had to be a dose five times the dose a normal person would get. I closed my eyes.

"That's what I'm doing now. This? This?" he motioned around us with both of his hands, then pointed at me. "You? You're the future. I'm rescuing you."

A laugh escaped my throat. A laugh that I hadn't heard in a long time; a laugh that only came from me when I heard something really, really funny.

Scott turned back to Jai and the computer. "There's someone else, you know. Others." 

The manic laughter that had found me a moment before had left me. I waited for Scott to elaborate, to explain what he was talking about. But he wanted me to take the bait. I was wondering exactly how much of this was a game to him when I asked, "What do you mean?"

"There are more safe houses like this one. Inconspicuous. With people who work around the clock to retrieve you and train you and keep you in line."

Keep us in line...

I kept my face towards the ceiling as Scott powered down the computer, rubbing his hands together as if he were dusting them off after a hard days work.

"There's a system. No, we aren't at the top, here." He left the computer and walked to me, sitting in the chair beside mine. "El, you're a part of this whether you want to be or not. You don't have to like it."  

I knew I didn't have to like it. He knew I didn't have to like it. I was more concerned with the fact that there are more people like us in other places. The question was how many?

Electricity skittered through me, rekindling the fire that had almost went out. Almost. Hearing that there were more places like this added with the image of a sleepy Jai in the chair ten feet away from me created an explosion in my chest again. "Why are you telling me all of this? Just use me. I don't give a shit that there are more people like us, that there are more idiotic, self centered assholes like you controlling us." I was mad at the fact that I was cornered, that I couldn't move without stepping on Scott's toes. And if I stepped too hard, he'd hurt someone I cared about. "Just use me!"

I glanced over at him, nervous at how incredibly close he'd gotten. When our eyes locked, he grinned. It disgusted me, how he was so pretty, so handsome, and yet so cruel and bitter. "Just use me," I whispered.

He whispered back, dipping his head as if he were going to kiss me. "Oh, I will. But first, I want you to meet Jai." Scott rose from the chair, the smile still on his face, when he yelled to his assistants, "Wake him up!"

It took all of five minutes for two assistants to get him to stir, but Jai finally came to. I watched Scott's assistants intently, but at the first sign of Jai waking up I turned my face back to the white ceiling. 

"Look at him, El," Scott said gently from across the room. He was watching, too, when I looked up at him. He leaned against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest. He raised his eyebrows in an amused way and said, "Watch."

I closed my eyes, bit my bottom lip. I didn't want to watch. No, no, no. Then I began to taste blood and realized that I was biting down into my lip, deep. I began to breathe hard at the smell and taste of my own blood, my mind overpowering my body. Fight or flight. Flight, said my brain. Fight, said my body. I heard my pulse beat in my ears, felt my legs go numb.

This wasn't happening. I had to have been having a bad dream. This can't happen to Jai.

"Hey, we might need an anxiolytic over here," Scott called out, laughing.

Someone working on getting Jai up responded. "I told you she'd crack."

I whipped my head to the side and pulled hard on the restraints around my arms and legs. I saw Jai now, staring up at the two people in white lab coats. My heart rate increased even more, but my breathing had stopped. Jai was in the process of sitting up. If I didn't know any better, he looked dizzy. An assistant was on either side of him, hands on both of his arms to steady him.

Suddenly, I couldn't hear. The edges of my eyes were blurry, creating tunnel vision. At the end of that tunnel was Jai, and only Jai. I watched as confusion took over his features, as he clenched his jaw in disorientation. His hands gripped the edge of the chair as Scott appeared in my vision, talking to Jai. Introducing himself as the one who saved Jai, as the hero.

I suddenly felt someone at my left side and turned my head to look. It was a white lab coat, cleaning off the port to the IV in my arm. I watched, too grief stricken to move, as the assistant hooked the syringe of medication to my IV and began to push. I barely registered the burning sensation as the medication went into my vein, travelling up my arm and to my heart.

The assistant looked at me, leery. I knew he was trying to push the medication faster so that he could get away from me in case I tried to attack him, which led to the medicine eating up my vein. "Ever heard of alprazolam?" he asked me, his voice quiet as if not to upset me further.

I wanted to tell him that I had heard of it, and knew that it shouldn't be put in an IV, but giving him a lesson in IV drugs wasn't at the top of my list.

I let the assistant pump the xanax in my arm and looked back at priority number one, who was now standing. His eyes were on me. And they were angry.

I swallowed hard and opened my mouth to say something to him, anything that would prevent him from coming any closer. This wasn't Jai.

"Jai," Scott said, trying to get his attention away from me. Scott needed me, or else he wouldn't be concerned that Jai looked like he was about to murder me on the spot. In the back of my mind, I wondered what Scott had shoved into Jai's mind to make him hate me. What false memory could he have planted that made Jai look at me the way he was looking at me right now?

Jai's eyes lightened up at the sound of Scott's voice and I saw his hand twitch at his side. It didn't take half a second for Jai's face to become stone cold again, hatred swimming around in his dark eyes. He took two strong steps in my direction, his teeth almost bared, fist raised to hit me, when Scott shot him in the back with his stun gun.