Bloom (10 page)

She squinted down at her body as the room started to come into focus. She was on her back atop a hard metal table and her arms and legs were pinned down with thick plastic straps wrapped around her wrists and ankles. She wore a loose, blue cotton shirt and matching pants, much like the scrubs her mother would wear to work at the hospital. Thin wires ran out of a hole in the floor and up to the table. The multicolored wires burrowed into the backs of her hands and the skin of her arms all the way up to her shoulders.

Haven tried to scream for help, but a thick plastic strip ran over her mouth, sealing it closed. She struggled violently to break free from her bindings, thrashing back and forth on the table and pounding her arms and legs against the metal.

Her vision started to go black as the pain in her head worsened. She closed her eyes and stopped moving as she fought a wave of dizziness that swirled inside her head as if she were on a violent rollercoaster. Haven tilted her head to let her wild hair fall to the side, then slowly opened her eyes and looked around the room.

The glaring light in the ceiling emanated from a single, round fixture which hung down like some bizarre chandelier. It had a square outline but a domed top and the element was covered with a thin metal mesh, like a cage.

The table upon which Haven lay was the only piece of furniture in the room. It was a single metal slab supported by four square metal legs that were bolted into the hard polished floor. The walls were dull white—the same as the ceiling—with no decoration of any kind. The only window was a small square of tinted glass set into the tall metal door in the wall past her feet.

She waited for what seemed like hours, drifting in and out of consciousness between fits of struggling. Every time she tried to escape, her body became weaker and weaker, until eventually the only thing she could do was lay on the table, breathing in quick gasps like a caged, frightened animal.

Later that day—or that week, or month; she had no way of knowing—they came for her.

The door opened slowly, hissing loudly on pneumatic pistons. She strained against her bindings to raise her head and look. The wires in her arms pulled painfully at her skin when she tried to sit up. As the door swung farther on its hinges, she saw that it was incredibly thick—at least a foot of solid metal from front to back, with two massive, rectangular sliding bolts in the center.

The door hit the inside wall with a deep, ominous
thoooommmm
, and two men wearing full-body protective suits walked into the room. The suits were made of white, flimsy plastic and encased their bodies from head to toe. Tinted face shields kept Haven from seeing who they were.

One of the men walked over to the table and knelt down by the wires that ran up from the floor. The other stood next to Haven and pulled the wires out of her arms, one at a time. Each time he pulled one out, he left behind a tiny bead of rising blood. The man under the table was feeding the wires into the floor as his partner removed them from Haven’s skin.

When all the wires had been yanked from her arms and hands, the men left the room. The door remained open, and Haven would have tried once more to escape her bindings if only she weren’t so weak. She rested her head back on the table as tears ran from the outside corners of her eyes.

The sound of wheels rolling across the floor echoed through the open doorway. It grew louder until the men reappeared, pushing a cart that looked like a smaller version of the table in the room.

They worked quickly, unstrapping her left leg and securing it to the moveable table before unstrapping her right leg. They freed both of her arms and shifted her body onto the cart. She made muffled noises through the plastic strip covering her mouth as she tried to ask them what they were going to do to her. Her eyes blinked slowly as she fought to stay awake. The dizziness returned and her eyelids fluttered rapidly.

After they got her settled onto the cart, the men slipped her hands through the new plastic bindings and tightened them around her wrists. Haven lifted her head, but one of the men placed his hand on it and gently pushed it back down to the table.

They wheeled the cart out through the doorway and down a long, bright hallway. Tall metal doors—just like the one leading to her room—lined both sides of the hall. Haven couldn’t see past the tinted windows to find out what was inside.

The men pushed her cart through two large swinging doors at the end of the hallway and into a large, dark room. At the back of that room was a smaller door which led to an even smaller room; barely big enough for her cart and the two men to move around it.

They stopped the cart in the middle of the small room and clicked the wheels into four locking grips on the floor. One of the men wheeled over a small cart loaded with all kinds of monitoring equipment while the other swabbed her forearm with a wet cotton ball. He set aside the cotton and picked up a needle attached to a long, clear tube. The tube ran up to a bag of clear liquid hanging over Haven’s cart.

He held her arm down firmly while he inserted the needle into her arm. A burst of bright red blood shot up into the clear tube, then flowed back into her skin. She wanted to reach for the needle with her other arm as soon as the man let go but was too weak to do anything more than twitch her wrist.

The men stared down at her through their black face shields for a long time. Haven could hear them breathing through some kind of filtration system built into their suits.

Help
, she wanted to say.
Please help me
.

The men turned and left the room. Next to her on a long table were all sorts of shiny, stainless steel tools: scissors, bone saws, pliers, a small hammer.

Haven found new energy and shouted into the thick plastic over her mouth.

The door burst open and another man in a protective suit hurried in. The suit looked as if it had been put on in a hurry; the helmet sat crookedly and the material on the man’s arms and legs was all bunched up and wrinkled.

It reminded Haven of Noah in his pajamas.

The man moved quickly to her cart and looked down at her. His head was moving and she could hear him trying to say something from inside his floppy face covering, but she couldn’t make out the words. After a few more syllables, he shook his head in frustration and lifted the face mask up over his head.

“I am Marius,” he said with a heavy Russian accent. He had a thick brow that stuck out over his dark eyes. “They kidnapped you from the hospital after what happened at school. You are safe now. Well, you will be. In a few minutes, probably.” He let the mask fall back over his eyes while he yanked the needle out of her arm. “Sorry,” he said loudly from behind his mask.

She lifted her restrained arms and he picked up a serrated blade from the table of tools. He cut through the thin strips of plastic that connected her bindings to the table but left the thick cuffs on her forearms with several inches of the straps attached. He pulled up his mask again when he saw her glaring at him.

“Best to leave them on, for now. In case they see us. Please, there is no time.”

He pulled the mask down over his face and continued cutting. Soon her legs were free from the table. She pointed to the plastic covering over her mouth but he shook his head,
no
. He bent down and unlocked each of the wheels, then pushed the cart out of the room, whistling softly inside his helmet.

They went out through the large room and back into the hallway, down to the other end and through another set of swinging doors. Marius nodded his bulky head ponderously at the few people he passed along the way. Not everyone wore a protective suit; most of them looked like normal doctors or nurses, roaming the halls of the vast complex and making notations on small electronic pads. Whenever someone looked at Marius and his strange cargo for more than a few seconds, he would pick up a clipboard from the cart and flip through a couple pages until the nosy observer was out of sight.

Marius stopped in the middle of a four-way intersection of hallways and pulled back the left sleeve of his white suit to reveal a crude drawing on his arm. Thick black lines drawn in permanent marker traced a map over his hairy skin. His finger followed a long line and stopped at the four-way intersection on the map. He mumbled to himself and pointed down each hallway in turn while checking the map on his arm. He finally settled on a direction and pushed Haven’s cart quickly down another long, bright corridor.

“Ah-ha!” he said. He stopped the cart next to a plain white door and looked down at the chunky metal keypad next to the handle. Marius pulled off his left glove and stuck his hand on the keypad. A ball of orange light burst from his palm and burned through the wall, completely melting the keypad and everything else in a five-inch radius.

Marius laughed and lightly tapped the door. It swung open easily.

He pulled off his mask and tossed it aside. “Okay,” he said. “Now for hard part.”

He lifted Haven from the cart. He set her down on the floor and draped one of her arms over the back of his neck to support her as they walked.

The lights in the hallway changed from bright white to a deep, flashing red. In the distance, an alarm blared.

“Too soon!” said Marius. He cursed in his native language. “Fine, we just move faster, yes? You can do this for Marius?”

Haven nodded, not truly believing she would be able to keep up. Her head still swam with dizziness and pain, and she had a hard time focusing on her surroundings. She dedicated all of her energy on putting one foot in front of the other.

Marius led her through a door and into a tall stairwell. He climbed the steps two at a time, carrying Haven most of the way. He counted the doors that they passed along the way.

“…three…four…five! Here it is.”

He let Haven rest against the wall while he peered through the small rectangular window in the door. Haven leaned over to look and saw a receptionist’s area beyond, with several men and women seated behind a long desk next to a big glass door which led to the outside world.

“Oh!” said Marius. “I forgot, I’m so sorry.”

He reached behind her head with both hands and touched the face covering. There was a small flash of orange light and the straps loosened. He pulled it away gently and threw it aside.

“Thank you,” whispered Haven.

Marius smiled. “Thank me if we get out in one piece.”

He held up a finger to be quiet and cocked his head. Footsteps pounded up the hallway from below. Marius ran to the railing and looked down the stairwell.

“They move quickly. Many more than I was hoping.”

He walked back to the door and kicked it open. A woman on the other side screamed and jumped up from her chair. All of the receptionists reached for the nearest phone as Marius strolled into the room supporting Haven.

“Just making withdrawal!” he said, laughing.

He lifted Haven off the ground and ran to the door. The receptionists were shouting for them to stop, but Marius pushed open the large glass door and ran out into the bright sunlight.

“Almost there,” he told her. “Almost safe.”

A black four-door car with darkly tinted windows screeched to a halt in the parking lot in front of the building. Marius hurried over to it and set Haven in the back seat after the door popped open from the inside. He quickly shut her door and climbed into the passenger seat, shouting, “Go go go!”

The driver—a short woman with shock-white hair—slammed down on the gas pedal and peeled out of the parking lot.

Haven managed to sit up and look out through the back window. Only a small concrete dome with a single glass door and several windows sat in the middle of a vast desert—the entire complex must have been underground. A paved parking lot surrounded the dome but was mostly empty except for a few large, black pickup trucks with modified bodies and large tires. As Haven watched, the glass door opened and a group of men wielding large guns ran outside. They split up and got into two of the black trucks. Their tires kicked up dirt and gravel as they sped out of the parking lot and followed after the sedan.

“Well,” said Marius as he looked back, “I guess they wanted to keep you after all.”

Haven closed her eyes as a heavy wave of nausea passed through her body. She felt as if she were in an elevator that was dropping too quickly.

She took a deep breath and sat up in the back seat of the car to try and focus on what was happening around her.

Marius stood up in the passenger seat and faced backward, the top half of his body sticking out through the open sunroof of the car. He had some kind of machine gun and fired short bursts at the two trucks. Haven looked back and saw that all of the bullets were hitting the road near the tires of the pursuing vehicles, but none made contact with the spinning wheels.

Marius uttered foreign curses under his breath and tossed the gun into the back seat next to Haven. He dropped down into his seat, scowling.

“Time for big gun,” he said.

The white-haired woman behind the wheel nodded and pushed a button on the side of her seat. She slid back as far as she could go, then turned on the car’s cruise control. Marius reached over and held the wheel as the woman nimbly climbed over the center console and into the passenger’s seat. Marius grinned when she sat in his lap.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she said playfully.

“Ha!” said Marius. He clumsily made his way into the driver’s seat and sat down. “By the way,” he shouted into the back seat, “this is Corva.”

Haven brushed the hair out of her eyes and tried to smile, but all she could manage was a weak little smirk.

Corva stood up through the sunroof and straddled the center console, one foot in the middle of each seat.

“Careful!” said Marius as he looked down between his legs at the shiny black boot digging into the seat. “This real leather!”

Corva stuck her right arm down into the car impatiently and waved in front of Marius’s face. He grabbed her forearm just above the wrist and she held onto his arm tightly.

A pale orange glow wavered across Marius’s skin. It grew intensely until it became a sheath of flame that covered his entire body. Some of the flames licked out like snapping whips before being pulled back into his body. Haven reached toward him and felt heat, but nothing around him was melting. He looked at her in the rearview mirror and his eyes burst into orange flame. The fire moved quickly up to his hair and soon that, too, was ablaze, dancing wildly against the inside roof of the car. The cloth, the seat—everything touched by the flames remained unburned.