Supernormal (25 page)

Ashley.

Ch. 28

Cam.

Cam was here, Cam was
safe
.  And the others, too—Ashley knew that and was grateful.  But there wasn’t much room for them right now.  At the moment there was only room for him.  He was scraped up and dusted with—was that rubble?—and wearing a blindfold.  But he was alive.  He was fine.  She could smell and touch and see him.

It took conscious and concerted effort to turn her attention to the other people.  It took every muscle in her body to let go of him, enough to follow Liz and Brody down the stairs to the others.

Five.  That wasn’t including her friends, and Ashley was willing to bet there were more.  That was all right.  She would end it.  Ashley opened her mouth, but whatever she was going to say was caught when Ian, green and lumbering to his feet, yanked her in for a hug that strangled the breath out of her.  For some reason it made her laugh.  “Geez, Ian.”

“Shit, Ash, it is really, really good to see you.”  He was wheezing, but the grin was all Ian.

“You okay?”

“Me?  Sure, yeah.  She’s good, too,” Ian said, waving to a girl huddled and shrieking in a corner.  “She’s just not handling it well.  Danny?” he asked.

Danny was performing CPR on a boy.  He hadn’t stopped when they’d arrived.  His face was grim.  Agent Phillips was already leaning over him.  He checked the boy’s pulse and glanced back at the broken door and the hallway.  “How long was he exposed?”

“Not long,” Danny said, not pausing.  “I went back for him.  I didn’t leave him there, I got him out as fast as I could.”

Phillips shared a look with Brody, then turned back to Danny.  “Mr. Evans—”

“He’s not dead,” Danny snapped.  “I got him out of there.  We got Ian out first,
but then I went back for him
.”

“The rest of you are alive,” Agent Phillips said.  “Which means he was likely ill even before any of this started.  His body was no doubt rejecting what had been done to him.”

Danny didn’t stop.  There were tears running down his face.  “I didn’t leave him there.”

“No,” Agent Phillips said.  “You didn’t.”

Ashley went to untie Cam’s blindfold, but he shook his head before she moved.  Ian called over, “Hey, Ash.  Gonna want to keep that on him.  Before he was saying something about double vision and trying to claw his eyes out.”

The fog was gone, and the hate was there, like fire under rock.  The burn was a smooth, steady sear.  “What did they do to you?” she asked, and was surprised she sounded so controlled.  That she felt in control, because she could feel the anger.  Ashley had always thought of anger as loud, and explosive, but it wasn’t all like that.  Sometimes it was quiet and black and focused.

She saw him fighting against the answer for a second.  “Needles.”

“A lot?”

He shook his head.  Or maybe nodded.

“It’s a long story,” Danny said.

“Whatever they did to him made him go crazy,” Ian said.

“Okay, it’s not actually that long a story,” Danny admitted.

Cam shook his head fiercely.  “Not crazy,” he choked. “
Not crazy
.  They made me see—everything.  I can see
everything.
”  His clutched at his head with his free hand, his fingers digging into his scalp until they drew blood.  “I can’t—make it stop.”

“I will.”  Ashley pulled his hand away, took hold of both of them.

“Make it
stop
.”

“I will.  I promise, I will.”

“It’s not happening.  None of it’s really happening.  It’s not real, it’s not Now.  It
hurts
.” 

There were tears, now, leaking from under the blindfold, and he would’ve fallen flat on his face if Ashley hadn’t caught him.  She hated that all she could say was, “I know, I’m sorry, I’ll find a way to make it stop
.
”

“Don’t go.”

“I won’t.”

“He’ll go after you.  If you run, he runs after you.  He’ll find you—don’t go.”

“I am not going anywhere,” Ashley told him.  “I’m staying here.  Right here, right now, with you.  Please, Cam, be here, now, with me.”

He rested his forehead against hers, and nodded.  They didn’t have time to wait, but she waited there, with him, until he went still and his breathing calmed.

Brody was kneeling in front of the man she’d fought, who was slumped on the floor, his arms secured behind his back.  That must have been painful.  Brody, stepping into the fight, had apparently deemed it simpler to dislocate the man’s shoulders, and from the look of it he hadn’t seen fit to pop them back into place.  “Steel.”

“Brody.”  There was a cut on his forehead that was bleeding quite a bit, but underneath the blood, the man’s face was pale and he was sweating.  Still, he managed to grin at Brody.  “You always were an asshole, you know.  I thought you got out of this.”

Brody said, “You’re going to tell me how many children they have here, and how many of you there are, and where Proom is.”

“I am?”  Steel was going slightly green now.

Brody took hold of Steel’s shoulder with three fingers, and twisted.  Obscenities shot out of Steel’s mouth like fireworks.  “You’re going to tell me—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”  Steel leaned his head back against the wall.  He’d gone pale with the pain.  “Jesus, you fuck—”

“Yes.”  Brody gave him a thin, humorous smile and snapped his fingers.  “Focus, Steel.  I’ve never known you to pick the losing side.  Don’t start now.”

Steel swallowed hard.  “Three doctors.  Besides Proom, that is.  They don’t leave the Medlab much.  Five guards.  One’ll be with the lab coats to make sure they don’t trip over anything or accidentally set the building on fire—fuck, fuck,
fuck.
”  Steel nodded to his shoulders.  “C’mon, I’m helping.”

“Kids,” Brody said.

“Nine,” Steel gasped, and then cursed explosively when Brody grabbed one of his arms and popped it back into place.

“Proom,” Brody said.

“How the fuck should I know?  He pays me to do what he says, not to be his fucking babysitter.  Told me to come down here, make sure none of the kids—”  He stopped at that.

“None of the kids
what?
!” Liz shrieked.  “None of the kids
got out?! 
Before he tried to gas us to death?!”  She hurled herself at him, but Ian caught her hand, held her back.

Brody stood abruptly.  The red lights were flashing odd shadows over the walls.  “Proom’s cleaning house.  Danny, you’re with us.  Liz, Ian, I need you to stay put and keep an eye on Cam and the girl.  We’ll be back for you.  Agent Phillips, I’m going to need you to locate the other four kids, wherever they are.  I’m sure our friend here would be happy to help you with that.  Steel, can I trust you to be a good boy and stay put?  I’d hate to have to come after you.”

“Go fuck yourself, Brody.”

Brody ignored this.  “Ashley?”

Ashley closed her eyes and breathed in deep.  Concentrated on the sick, stinging smell radiating off of Cam and her friends, on tracking it through the sterile air.  She nodded.

“I can help,” Ian said.

“Help by keeping everyone safe ‘til we get back,” Brody told him.

“And take Cam,” Ashley said, grabbing Danny’s wrist and heading towards the down staircase.

“No,” Cam said.

“Cam—”

“
No
,” he said, and he held on tight.  “I leave when you leave.”

Ashley squeezed her eyes shut.  She forced herself to take Cam’s hands.  To pull them away.  “Ian?”

“No,
no
—”

“I got him, Ash,” Ian said.  “I’ll take care of him.”

“No—
Ashley!”

It was dangerous here.  She knew that.  And Ian would take care of him.  And there wasn’t much time.  The stinging scent of gas was building in her head now.  Her hand clamped around Danny’s wrist, Ashley forced herself not to listen, and broke into a run.

The glass doors to the Medlab were shut, the room beyond it shrouded in a sickly green fog, turning slightly orange every few seconds with the flashing light of the alarm.  Because she wanted to slow, Ashley pushed herself, sucking in a deep breath before she launched herself through the solid glass doors, so hard and fast that one door burst completely and the other was yanked off its hinges.  The gas had a slick, slimy feel as it almost instantly coated her skin and burned where broken glass had sliced into her arms and legs.

A woman in a white lab coat was slumped against the wall near the door, her arms stretched out towards the communication panel on the wall.  Ashley hauled her up as Danny raced through the open doorway, skidding to a stop before he tripped over the broken door.  “You find them!” Ashley barked, trying desperately not to breathe in.  “I’ll get them out!”

Danny nodded, already charging further into the room.

Ashley raced for the door to the stairwell.  Brody opened it before she could reach for the handle, and she dumped the woman into his arms, then turned and hurtled back into the room.  The air was a bit clearer, the gas snaking through the broken doors into the long length of hallway.  Danny called her name, dragging a man in a lab coat by his ankles.

“There’s another doctor back there and one of Proom’s goons,” Danny told her as she hefted the man over her shoulder.  “Hooked themselves up to the oxygen tanks.  And the guy, the patient, on the bed.”

“See to the patient,” Brody said, moving quickly into the room and quickly past them.  “I’ll get the others.”

Ashley raced out to drop the man down in the stairwell, passing Brody—a full grown man over each shoulder—on her way back.

She found Danny in one of the sectioned off areas in the Medlab, standing by a hospital bed.  There was a man stretched out in the bed, a thin blanket pulled up to his chest, tubes and wires trailing out of him and into the machinery next to his bed.  Ashley looked at the man’s face, then reached out and touched his arm.  She didn’t check his pulse, or if he was breathing.  She didn’t have to.

“Who…?” Danny began, but then he stopped.  He sounded tired.

“His name is Burke,” Ashley said.  She didn’t mind the sting of the gas in her lungs as she spoke.  “He was a doctor here.”  He was paler than she remembered, and there was a scar by his ear, disappearing into his hairline. 
Blood clot
, Ashley remembered; Proom had told her they had to operate, but there had been brain damage.  “Until I hurt him,” Ashley said.

“He do to you what they did to us?” Danny asked.

Ashley didn’t answer.  She heard the muted footsteps, felt the shift of the gas in the air as someone headed towards them.  With the gas searing her nose, she didn’t have as much warning.  She thought it was Brody.  It was Craig.

He looked…the same.  Mostly.  A little older—hair greying around the temples, more lines on his face—but the same towering build, the same bitter look on his face.  Ashley felt the tension crawl up her back and pull her muscles taut, but Craig wasn’t even looking at them.  He was looking at the body on the bed.  He put his hand on Burke’s, almost as if to wake him.

Then he looked up.  At Ashley.  Through the last wisps of green smoke, she could see that his eyes were cloudy and slightly unfocused.  But what focus they had was on her.  Ashley shifted on the balls of her feet, positioning herself in front of Danny.

“You,” Craig said, and Ashley shoved Danny, so that he went skidding back along the floor.  She pushed herself down as she did so, sliding under the medical bed even as Craig lunged for her.  She kicked his legs out from under him, and he landed hard, half on the bed.  She heard Danny yelling for Brody.  The bed creaked as Craig levered himself up, and Ashley rolled away, out from under the bed, keeping the roll until she got her feet back under her.  Craig launched himself over the bed as she aimed for door.  She was fast, but so was he, and he had a long reach.  His hand clamped around her hair and yanked her back, close enough to get a handful of shirt and haul her up over his head.  Ashley twisted and kicked, and even as she did, he hurled her across the room.  She smashed through glass partitions and knocked over trays of instruments before she met the wall.  Ashley felt the floor—under her, yes—felt the slight rain of plaster dust, felt the sting and slice along her skin as she pushed herself up—going through the glass always cut you up.  It was not entirely unlike being hit with a van, and, sweet Jesus, to be able to make that comparison.

She heard Craig’s footsteps crunch over the broken glass towards her.  He stopped when she shifted herself into a sitting position.  Whether that was because he hadn’t expected her to just take a time out, or because he sensed Brody behind him, she couldn’t say.

“Get up,” Craig said.

Ashley shook her head.

“I said get the fuck up.”  The words sounded desperate, as if they had to be wrenched out.

Ashley stayed where she was.  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Too late.  Get
up
,” Craig thundered.  “Or do you only go after people who can’t fight back?”  When she didn’t move, his eyes narrowed.  “Fine.”