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| Jackson |
Jackson held Damon's hand, trying his best to stay composed. But the Alpha's blood covered most of the floor, and there was no way to tell whether they were close to Silverlake or still in the middle of the forest.
"Damon?" he asked shakily as he watched Damon's eyes close. "You have to stay awake."
The Alpha grunted weakly in response.
"Can't we do anything?" Jackson pleaded, looking at Bly.
She shook her head. "The best we can do is hold him on his side like this until we get back to the Venaticus. They're going to need to have everything ready for surgery."
"Can you get that Lucian guy again?" Tokala asked, holding the radio out to Jackson. "Tell him what's going on."
Jackson nodded as he took the radio. He held it to his face and pressed the button on the side. "Uh...hello? Heir Lucian?"
There was no reply.
"Hello?!"
"Yeah, I'm here. What is it?" Heir Lucian replied.
"Uh...i-it's Damon. When we crashed, something impaled his back. Our Theta says he's gonna need surgery. Can you—"
"We've got a med team standing by already. Can you tell me more about his injury so the team can be better prepared?"
Jackson looked at Bly.
She took the radio from him. "From what I can see, there's a dagger through his lumbar region. He can't move and he's losing a lot of blood. If he's not in surgery in the next few minutes, he might bleed out," she explained quickly, shaking her head.
Her words struck Jackson with horror. A few minutes? Were they going to make it? He couldn't lose Damon—not now. Not because of this. Not because he'd dragged him and his pack out here on some stupid mission to find his friend.
"All right, we've got a neurologist on site. You're just a few moments out, so I'll see you all for debriefing soon," Lucian said as Bly handed the radio back to Jackson.
But Jackson didn't say anything else to him. He put the radio down and moved his free hand over his other one, which he was still holding onto Damon's hand with. "It's gonna be okay," he told the Alpha quietly. "We're almost there."
It would be okay, right? Damon was strong—he was an Alpha. He had to hold on. He had to make it. It was only a few more moments.
The van began descending; it felt a lot like an elevator moving to a lower floor, and when they landed, the van shook a little, and something clanged on the roof.
Several voices broke through the sound of the helicopter blades. Tokala and Wesley moved over to the back doors to push them open, but just as they reached them, the doors opened from the outside, and several soldiers peered in at everyone.
"There!" a woman in a white coat called, pointing at Damon. "Get him on the stretcher."
Two men hurried into the van; they ushered everyone away from Damon, and then they carefully picked the Alpha up and placed him on the stretcher.
"I wanna go with him!" Jackson insisted.
But that was when Sebastien appeared. He stood in front of the doors and set his eyes on Jackson. "You're coming with me." He looked down at Wilson, who was still unconscious. "Get him into an interrogation room."
"Wait!" Jackson insisted, trying to reach Wilson as a man picked him up and threw him over his shoulder.
But Sebastien grabbed his arm and stopped him from following. "You'll get to see your friend later. You're needed for debriefing."
Jackson stood there and watched the medical team carry Damon inside the double doors at the end of the helipad, and then looked at the man carrying Wilson. He went through a different pair of doors, taking away Jackson's best friend before he'd even had a chance to talk to him.
"The rest of you will follow Commander Frances here. He'll take you down to a room we've prepared for you all to clean up and rest in."
Tokala stepped forward. "Don't you need us for debriefing, too?"
"Yeah. You'll be summoned one by one. For now, go rest."
"What about our Alpha?" Alastor asked. "Is he going to be okay?"
"Can we see him?" Wesley asked.
"Yeah, isn't there a waiting room?" Dustu asked.
Sebastien opened his mouth to speak—
"Lalo needs help, too!" Julian announced.
Everyone stepped aside, revealing Julian and Lalo. Lalo lay on the floor, panting and struggling to breathe.
With a quiet sigh, Sebastien looked at Commander Frances. "Make sure that guy gets down to medical," he said, pointing at Lalo.
"Yes, sir," the commander said.
Sebastien then pulled Jackson with him as he headed across the helipad. "Don't worry, all right? Your Alpha will be fine. We've got the best medical team anywhere else in the world."
"Why can't I just...go with him? You can debrief me after," Jackson complained sullenly as Sebastien led him through the double doors and down a wide, white, empty hallway.
"You can't watch a surgery, kid. You can go to the waiting room after we're done with Heir Lucian and Lord Caedis, though."
Jackson kept a despondent frown as he followed Sebastien into an elevator, and when Sebastien let go of him, Jackson crossed his arms. His heart was beating hard, and his legs trembled as his anxiety constricted him tightly. He wanted to believe what Sebastien told him, but knowing Damon was moments away from bleeding out horrified him—it made him want to scream. All he wanted to do was be with him; he wanted to see him. But he wasn't going to get to do that for a while, was he?
He turned his head to look at Sebastien. "Can I just...see him for a sec, please?"
Sebastien sighed and looked at him. "Look, kid. He's going to be fine. The surgeons here have saved me from much worse than a knife in the back, all right? I promise you. Now, just focus on what you're gonna tell the boss man."
Jackson frowned. "What?"
"We saw some weird shit tonight, man. So, I'm gonna warn you now, Lord Caedis might flip a table or something."
His frown thickened. "What...you...you mean the people zombies?"
He nodded. "As far as we knew, the cadejo virus couldn't turn humans or humanoids into undead. A mature demon's immune system fights the virus off, and it just kills humans. But as far as the human fact goes, it seems like shit's changing."
Jackson took a moment to absorb what he said, and when the elevator arrived, he followed Sebastien out. "Wait, so...if a demon's immune system fights the virus off, why not just use whatever part of a demon does that to manufacture a cure?"
"Do you think we haven't tried that?" Sebastien mumbled.
"What...happened?"
"Humans and demons don't go together unless they're born a cambion. You can't just...make a human-demon hybrid out of a human that's already walking around. All the attempts our scientists made ended up in death. Some of those deaths were really gnarly, man," he mumbled, heading through the offices and towards Lucian's corner office. "No, this whole thing started with wolf walkers, and that's how it's gonna end."
Sebastien pushed the office door open.
Jackson immediately set his eyes on Lord Caedis, who was sitting on the black leather couch over by the window. Then, he looked at Lucian, who just stood up from his chair and made his way over to the couch.
"'Ow are you vounds?" Caedis asked Sebastien.
"I'm all right," he answered with a nod, closing the door behind them. "Look, we saw some pretty effed up stuff out there, and you're not gonna like any of it."
Caedis raised an eyebrow.
"Zombies," Jackson uttered.
"People," Sebastien added. "Turned people."
Both Lucian and Caedis adorned the same concerned frown.
"Turned by the cadejo virus?" Lucian asked.
"I believe so," Sebastien answered. "They looked the same way all things do when that virus takes them, and they smelled the same, too. There were hundreds of them."
Caedis scowled irritably—it looked like he was going to flip the coffee table in front of him as Sebastien said—but he shook his head and exhaled quietly. "Ve can't be sure until ve get samples. Vor all ve know, zhis could be someving else. Whoever created zhese cadejo could be creating ozzer vings, too." He looked at Sebastien. "You zidn't so 'appen to bring vone of zhese turned 'umans back vith you, did you?"
"Uh...no, my lord. Sorry," Sebastien answered, shaking his head.
With a sigh, Caedis turned his head and gazed out the window. "Ve are going to need to tighten security 'ere. Ve vill 'ave to do medical screenings vor everyvone coming and going. Ve can't visk vhatever you saw out zhere getting in."
Sebastien nodded. "I already took precautions, my lord. One of the troops was bitten. I had to kill him."
Caedis nodded as he turned his head to look at Sebastien and Jackson. "And zhe mission vent vine apart vrom zhis?"
"Yes, my lord. We extracted the target. He's in an interrogation room downstairs. We're going to try the personal approach first, and if Jackson can't get him to tell him where the laboratory is, we'll get someone else to extract the information."
"You're still going to let me talk to him?" Jackson asked, surprised.
"Yeah," Lucian said. "If we can avoid force, then we will. Sometimes, though, force is the only thing that tends to work."
Jackson shook his head. "He'll talk to me."
Caedis sighed as he stood up. "Vell, you better get to, zhen." Then, he moved closer to Lucian and muttered to him, "I need to share zhis vith Zaliv. You are in charge vhile I'm gone."
"Like always," Lucian replied.
Then, Caedis pulled open one of the windows. "Ve vill veconvene vonce I 'ave more invormation." Then, he morphed into a cloud of vermillion smoke and raced out the building.
Jackson shook his head and frowned strangely. What the hell just happened?
"Come on," Sebastien said.
"What just happened?" Jackson asked, following him out of Lucian's office.
"What?"
"Lord Caedis. He just...turned into, like...smoke."
"It's an ancient form of demon travel. Dude is probably already on the other side of the world by now."
A part of Jackson wanted to ask if he'd be able to learn to do that, but he didn't have any motivation for absorbing information right now. He wasn't only entangled with worry for Damon, but he was also scared about what those human zombies meant for the world. Had the cadejo virus evolved? Was it affecting more than wolf walkers?
"What happens if the virus has evolved?" he asked Sebastien, following him towards the elevator.
"Cadejo were never a problem to humans, but if the virus is turning humans, we're going to have to up our defences a lot. Not just here, but everywhere. As far as we know, the cadejo are only here in Ascela, but all it takes is one infected person to get on a plane and carry it elsewhere. It's now the Venaticus' job to stop the spread before it can start.
"This also means you're really going to have to step up and get this information out of your friend. We need to find that lab so we can stop this thing once and for all."
Jackson exhaled deeply and tried to calm himself down. He had to believe that Damon would be okay and focus on what he was going to say to Wilson. But what was he going to say to him? He had so many questions: why was he working with hunters? Why was he acting like a hunter? But his need for answers was going to have to wait, wasn't it? The Venaticus wanted to know where the laboratory he and Wilson were going to come looking for was, so somehow, he needed to get that information out of his friend first.
The elevator arrived, and as he followed Sebastien through the hall, Jackson glanced inside every empty room. When they stopped outside that which Wilson was in, though, he tensed up, and his body was once again riddled with angst. His friend was handcuffed to the table, and he was sitting there with his head in his arms.
But then Jackson noticed that Wilson's clothes were torn and bloody. "What happened to him?"
"He's a little roughed up. Maybe from the van crash or whatever happened out in the forest when your pack captured him. Do whatever you have to to get the location of that lab out of him."
"What...what if he doesn't tell me?"
Sebastien shrugged. "Then we take over."
He didn't want that to happen. The way demons pried information from someone sounded painful, and as much as he wanted to find out where that lab was so that he could fulfil his part of the bargain with Caedis, he didn't want his friend to be subjected to such a thing. So, he was going to have to do his best to get Wilson to tell him where they needed to go.
When Sebastien pushed the interrogation room door open, Jackson watched through the window as Wilson lifted his head and glared at him.
"What's going on?" Wilson called. "Where the hell am I?!"
With a deep exhale, Jackson did his best to shove aside his anxiety and slowly made his way past Sebastien and into the room.
The moment Wilson saw him, his face lit up, but then a frown stole his surprised expression. "Jackson?"
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