Coming Home

Chapter 43 - Alone

All dressed in black I couldn’t see who the figure was. I felt the sharp pinch in the middle of my arm, on the inside of my elbow, that I would later know was a needle. Whatever had been in the injection it just short of paralysed me.  I could breathe but that was it. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move. No matter how hard I tried. I could only lie still as I was carried out the window and outside into the cold, cold street. The figure bundled me into a car. Or maybe it was a van. I don’t know.

I was numb. And I think…I think I was crying.

The next thing I remember is waking up. I must have been unconscious. I wouldn’t say I was asleep. I lay on a stone cold, concrete floor. A florescent white light shone from the ceiling, so bright that even opening my eyes slightly sent a sharp pain though my head. Trying to move got the same result. What I could feel of my still numb arm ached as I tried to move it. Slowly, I rolled my sleeve up to my elbow to see a dark purple bruise blossoming on my pale skin. My fingers were purple too, though that was from the cold, not the injection. I hoped so anyway.

How long has it been? There was no way to tell the time. The more my eyes adjusted to the lighting, the faster my hope faded. It was small for a room, but large for a prison cell. The ground beneath my face was rock hard concrete and the walls were stone. There were no windows. And no windows meant there was no escape.

In fact, the only thing in the room was a door. It was made of metal and, judging by how I could barely sit up – never mind stand – I knew there was no way I could get out of it without a key.

Somewhere nearby there was a leak. The continuous drip, drip, dripping was all I had to listen to. It slowly drove me crazy. I tried not to listen to it, but the harder I tried, the harder it became to hear anything else.

I tried to work out where I was. Where they would take me. Somewhere Logan would know, maybe. Somewhere he could get to. The room was damp which made me think I was underground. I wasn’t tied down or restrained in any way. But the drug they had given me ensured I couldn’t make any move to escape. And I still wore Logan shirt, which I was seriously regretting. The temperature of the room was below freezing. From what I could see of my legs, without moving too much, they were a similar shade of purple to match my hands.

Sometime later, it could have been an hour or a day, the metal door opened. The sound of it was deafening. It scraped against the floor, concrete against metal. A tall man came towards me. Or maybe he just seemed tall from my view, as I looked up at him from the floor. He wore a smart, expensive suit that looked as though it had been freshly pressed. His black hair was slicked back against his head. The strong smell of his sweet aftershave was sickening.

He came closer until he knelt in front of me. His face was angular, all sharp edges and points. He had blue eyes, almost the same shade as Logan. I saw the difference though. Logan’s were warm and friendly, easy to smile. This stranger’s eyes told me everything his body didn’t say. He was a killer.

My heart beat like a hammer in my chest, despite the calming drug that was still running through my veins. For a second, I was suffocated by fear.  He’ll kill me. He would do it in a second and not even blink. But then I remembered that they only had me here to get at Logan. They couldn’t kill me. Not yet. They needed me.

I thought, what would I say to someone else in this situation? What would I say to Jack? I would tell him to be brave. And that’s what I have to do.

I have to be brave. I have to become unbreakable.

He was handsome in a cruel sort of way. I felt as though God was giving me something nice to look at, my last sight, before he killed me. A hysterical laugh welled up inside of me at the thought.

He spoke in a clear, deep voice but I was still feeling fuzzy and had to concentrate to hear what he was saying. “I take it he told you about the experiments. The lab. Everything.”

Be brave. Be unbreakable. “And I take it that by ‘he’, you mean Logan.”

He hit me hard across the face. I bit my tongue; the taste of rusty, sour blood filled my mouth. The pain was sharp but it was something. The hysterical laughter escaped past my and echoed off the stone walls.

Don’t let him break you. Only one person in the world has the power to break me, and it isn’t this man.

“What do you want with me?”

“I would have thought that was obvious. We need Logan back. We’ve not finished with him yet. And the only way to get to him is through you.”

“He isn’t that stupid. He won’t come.” Please, Logan. Please don’t come after me.

“Of course he will. He always wants to play the hero.”

“Where am I? Is this were you kept Logan before?”

He only lifted his eye brows in a sarcastic look. He turned slightly away from me and I thought he was leaving. But when he turned back he moved too fast for me to react. The injection slipped into my arm, the liquid felt like fire racing through my frozen veins.

Then he did turn and leave. My vision went fuzzy and I could only stay awake long enough to watch him walk halfway to the door.

The next time I woke there was a tray on the floor next to me. On it sat a bottle of water and small pack of biscuits. I hadn’t realised how thirsty I was until I saw the water. I crawled over to the tray, dragging the lower half of my body, which was still numb from whatever drug he had given me.

Opening the lid seemed like the hardest thing I had ever done. My hands had no strength in them. I thought maybe I would never get it open but the promise of water was too much to give up on.

I must have been here for over twenty-four hours now…

What was Logan doing now, I wondered.  Would he even have noticed I’d gone?

What if he thinks I’ve left him? That I changed my mind…Would he give up on me?

Looking at the same blank, boring walls grew tiresome quickly. As did the constant dripping.

Drip, drip, drip.

I started humming nursery rhymes to myself to pass the time. I managed to get through about five when the awful door opened once more.

This time the person on the other side was not the man I had been expecting to see, but in fact, a woman.

She wore a white lab coat, just as a typical scientist would. Her brown hair was scraped back in a tight bun at the base of her neck, her face was plain, and nothing really stood out about her. Nothing to make her stand out in a crowd. An identification badge was clipped onto the breast pocket. I tried to see what her name was but my eye sight was too blurry, it wouldn’t focus.

As she approached me she got an injection out of her pocket and removed the safety cap. Oh, no. Not again.

“What is it that you keep giving me?” I asked my voice croaky and weak to my own ears.

She looked at me but said nothing. Something about that look told me she wasn’t all together happy about doing this to me. Does she pity me? I had to tell myself that she did. Maybe she was my key to getting out of this place.

“Are you proud of yourself? Drugging a helpless, innocent girl must make you feel powerful, am I right?”

She didn’t answer, but hurried to inject me as quickly as possible. As soon as she did, she turned and left.

This time the drug didn’t only make me feel disorientated, but also sick. I knew that I couldn’t have eaten for over 48 hours, at least. And now I also felt sick, it wasn’t going to make things any easier. I still had the biscuits, on the floor next to me.

The more of the drug they gave me, the harder it became to focus. To remember how long I had been here. To remember why I was here…

I went to a place inside myself. I tried to imagine that I was at home with Logan. Not at my flat but at his home. We were in his room, in his warm bed. And he was laying only a few inches away from me, sleeping. I reached out to touch him, but, of course, he wasn’t there. No one was. I was alone.

Will ever get out of here?